Madame Bovinity: A One-Cow Parade

By Shannon Hicks

Last Saturday morning, a few keen-eyed drivers and innumerable upper Main Street pedestrians noticed the newest resident of Newtown.

She has good taste: She enjoys Starbucks coffee and reads The Newtown Bee. She has a flair for theatrical fashion: She was wearing a ballet tutu and a pearl necklace. And while she had only been in the sun for a few hours, she was definitely quite pink.

Her name is Madame Bovinity, and she is a cow. Actually she is something of a cow-human hybrid, since she has the face of a cow and the legs of a human. But those legs, according to a note found next to the papier maché sculpture placed on one of the park benches outside Edmond Town Hall, helped the cow travel from New York City to her new home, Newtown.

Madame Bovinity is a sculpture that is a terrific take-off on this summer’s popular Cows On Parade, a summer art exhibition set up across all five boroughs of New York City (itself a take-off on a popular event that started two years ago in Zurich, Switzerland; see related story in August 18, 2000 Newtown Bee).

Artists from across the country have decorated fiberglass cows in a wide range of styles for CowParade™ 2000, and the creations have been put on display for the public to enjoy. At the end of this month, the cows will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to charities around the city and the cows going home with new owners.

While there were 500 official CowParade™ 2000 sculptures in and around Manhattan this summer, a number of artists caught cow fever and came up with their own creations. A secretive group called Newtown Artists on the Moo-ve is behind the creation of the papier maché sculpture that made its debut in Newtown last weekend. The group identified itself in the note left at The Bee offices and also in a letter posted alongside the sculpture.

The Newtown cow is a little smaller in scale than her life-size New York counterparts, but no less creative. The sculpture seems to have been created of papier maché, with a coating or two of some kind of shellac. She has very sultry eyes, deep pink horns, a hoop earring in her left ear, and is wearing gold pumps. And she has shapely legs that many women would kill for.

Well, Madame Bovinity had enjoyed her summer in the Big Apple, but she was not, according to a note that arrived at the offices of Bee Publishing Co. last Saturday morning, going to live “out the rest of her days on the 89th floor in a stuffy New York City corporate office.

“To avoid capture by the New York City moofia,” the note continued, Madame Bovinity decided it was time for an escape. So she hitched up her skirt and made her way to upper Fairfield County, where she finds it, according to the old slogan, “Nicer in Newtown.”

Madame Bovinity said farewell to her new friends in New York — among them Carousel Cow, Radio City Moosicow, Cash Cow and Cowapatra — left the city shortly after sunset on Thursday, August 31. She found her way to the foot of the town hall’s steps during the earliest hours of Saturday, September 2. No one knows how or when exactly she arrived.

But there she was, enjoying a grande serving of java from Starbucks, a copy of The Newtown Bee resting in her lap. Her newspaper had the headline “Cow Flees Manhattan,” with a second headline that read “Says it’s nicer in Newtown.”

“I’m here at 6:30 every morning,” Martin May, a member of the maintenance staff at Edmond Town Hall, said early Saturday afternoon. “I got here at my regular time today and she was already here.

“I don’t know when she got here or who did this, but I’m leaving it alone. There’s a lot of work there,” he said admiringly. “I think it’s very good. I got a kick out of it.”

Madame Bovinity had apparently had enough of the park bench at 45 Main Street by the early this week. By Tuesday morning she had once again strayed away, but another note arrived at The Bee offices on Wednesday morning with an update.

Newtown Artists on the Moo-ve found Madame Bovinity had fared well through the long holiday weekend, although the heat, a few rain showers and a large number of parade and movie attendees had taken their toll on the bovine beauty.

The new note, purportedly from Madame Bovinity, informed the good people of Newtown that Madame B. is taking a short rest “at the local cow hospital to mend my cuts and bruises and recover from the rain.”

Weather permitting, though, this cow knows the show must go on. Madame Bovinity also mentioned in her note that cow lovers young and old can plan to “look for me  … in town this coming weekend.”

Keep your eyes peeled.